Fiction 1, Chapters 25 & 26

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"Canadian Shield" Copyright © 1993

Chapter 25

"Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds;

Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,

Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages."

Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare

        STONY PLAIN, ALBERTA:

       "There's no sense running, guys," I said, looking around for a plan.  "We can't outrace 4X4's on the pathways or find ground cover in an apple orchard.  We'd stick out like a sore thumb."  We were just out of earshot of the balloonist, who was now busy inspecting his damaged property, and I was chairing a thirty second council of war.

       It was true: the perfectly geometric columns of tree trunks made ground-level evasive action impossible.  The fall foliage wrapped around the upper branches __on the other hand__ offered magnificent concealment and zero mobility.

       Jack asked, "Do you think we'll be facing one carload, or all three."  He didn't have to ask what we were going to do if we couldn't retreat; he knew.

       "I hope it's three.  All they know is a balloon went down somewhere near the center of the property and it will take them a couple of minutes to find out where.  Remember the three vehicles were at the gatehouse, instead of spread out.  If they're as sloppy as I think they are, they'll all be looking for the balloon.  They saw one guy by himself in it __I hope__ and he'll be right there in front of them."

       I took the furthest point of the triangular stake-out we had decided on, working my way around the fallen collapsed air-bag and its owner in a big circle.  I had the scanner and one machine pistol with a full clip of twenty loaded and two more besides.  Its firing selector lever was still set for bursts of three shots.

       All three of us had our small CB handsets, set to channel 29.  The mobile guards were using channel 10 to coordinate their search, and it sounded like they were reporting only to the gatehouse.  Better and better, I thought.  It took a little doing, but I got my city-raised butt up into an apple tree.

       I also had the big pepper spray can, the one as big as a small fire-extinguisher.  Jack had the little can; his father, the middle sized one.  We were hoping to be discreet and discrete in our assault, if possible.  We were there to save lives, not to take them.

       As long as I had normal people around me for a barometer, they could pretty well compensate for my lack of conscience.  Besides, the Canadians generally frown on massacres __at least by foreigners.

       Two 4X4's showed up and rolled to a stop facing each other.

       Of course, I couldn't see them at first, but their engine noise and the sound of their wheels on the gravel allowed me to track them by ear.  Only when they got close to the balloon __from different directions__ could I see them through the leaves.  There were three men in each.  

       Each driver stayed in his vehicle, the engines still running, with a hand-held radio on the front passenger's seat beside him.  The other four guards dismounted, shotguns at the ready, and approached the mad balloonist who was waving his arms at them and making incomprehensible noises.

        As near as I could tell, the pathway ran east and west, with the eastern-most vehicle and driver facing west, and vice-versa.  The basket and air-bag were lying on the road like a rounded wedge.  The narrow edge of the wedge, the basket, was pointed west and was situated across from me on the north side of the wide path.  That was the side that Jack and his father were on, in their respective trees.

       Two of the four guards had leaned their shotguns against a tree next to their buddies, and were trying to search and restrain Teddy all at the same time.  The other two __as well as the two drivers__ were laughing at the absurd efforts to control the madly gesticulating man who was so anxious to communicate and so wobbly at it.

       I gave the signal __three squeezes on the talk button__ and climbed down from the tree on the side away from all the action.  The duffle bag with my machine pistol, radio and scanner stayed in the tree.  One of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life was to walk out from behind that tree at the edge of the path.  All there was between me and two semi-automatic twelve gauge shotguns was a spray can, painted red.

       The two looked up and around as my footsteps hit the gravel path on the way toward them.  Two shotguns bored imaginary holes in my gut, holes real enough to slow me down to a crawling pace and finally to stop me, about halfway across the road.

       I held up the large red spray can, with its handle and trigger valve, and pointed to it with the index finger of the other hand.  Then I pointed at the balloon's propane burner.

       Time for one of your Voices, Grandma.

       "There's a propane leak there.  Smell it?"

       They wouldn't have been human if they hadn't turned to sniff.  Jack and Uncle John had already taken out the drivers while everybody's attention was on me.  Now as the two shotguns came off line with me, the men behind them got the full treatment as well.  The large canister of mine is effective up to dozen feet, but John and Jack were too close to their victims for me to join in on the most dangerous targets.  The shotgun-toting guards had turned, thinking that the slight hissing sound behind them might be the propane leak I was talking about.  They found out differently.  Thankfully, neither gun went off.

       I took care of the other two, the ones who had wrestled Teddy Roosevelt to the ground.  Too bad the balloonist was so close to them, though.

       On the other hand, the over-spray neatly __if regretfully__ solved our problem of what to do with him to keep him out of harm's way for a while.

       All of the guards were wearing police-style garrison belts under their civilian outer-wear, with holstered nine-millimeter Brownings __fifteen rounds per clip__ and encased handcuffs.  We borrowed all of their paraphernalia and the jackets and hats of three of them from the same vehicle, for the sake of appearances.  The handcuffs were used to anchor the guards, back-to-back, two to a tree __well away from the path.

       But our innocent bystander didn't have to share a tree with anybody.  We used his silk flying scarf and bound him to his basket.  A nice touch, that, I thought.  That still left about six men, and one 4X4, at the gatehouse area.  We donned our prisoners' jackets and caps, and took one of their vehicles.

       A toss-up, I thought.

       It was a good idea to go for the nerve center first in a sudden assault.  All indications were that it was within the three-storied house in the center of things.  But then we'd have to fight our way out, accompanied by two non-combatants.

       It was also a good idea to take out the firepower at the gatehouse while the element of surprise was in our favor.  At least it left a line of retreat open, and we would need one whether we succeeded or failed.

       Ideally we should carry out both missions at the same time.  The only question still up in the air __in that scenario__ would be:  Which one-man, super-hero attack team should I assign Uncle John to?  And the other fly in the ointment __if we hit both locations one at a time__ was the likelihood of communication between them; one warning the other.

       The front-gate guard was doing his job.  He was staring out the gate at the road, and scarcely glanced at us as we drove up to the little parking area next to the gate.

       We clustered around the suddenly popular little bastard for a minute, and when we walked away, "he" was Uncle John while the other three of us included a guy in the middle with a shotgun for a beard.  One down, umpteen to go.

       Jack and I tied and gagged him and left him under a bush.  No pepper spray this time.  I wanted at least one of them to talk to before we hit the main house.  We circled the guardhouse and carefully peeked in a window.  Nothing!  Another.  Nothing!  The third window we tried was suddenly filled with a face.  One of the guards was rubbing his jaw, checking his shave, when he looked right in my face and stared into my eyes.  There was doubt and surprise in his eyes as he leaned closer to the window for a better look.

       I ducked back __but it was too late, I knew.  All we could do was pin them down in the building momentarily while we tried to escape.  We'd be under fire within ten seconds.

       The guard in the window didn't raise an alarm though, he squeezed a pimple on his nose.  I hadn't been spotted at all.  It was twilight outside and the bathroom light was on inside, that's all.  The zit-squeezer had been using the window as a mirror.

       Ok.  We had the jacket collars to pull up and the caps to pull down.  We had shotguns for backup.  We had pepper spray for our assault weapon.  Why not just walk in and do it?  What was the likelihood that they'd shoot the next two men who walked in that door on general principal?

       So we did it.  Jack walked in first, as covered up as he could get without arousing immediate suspicion.  He turned half around to the right immediately to clear my field of fire and whipped up his spray can.  Spraying on the run he bowled down the two guards on his side of the room.

       I had the canister ready to go as soon as he was clear, and caught the other five men in one blast, as they played cards at a small table.  We didn't take the time to disarm them.  Even if they managed to find the strength to lift their handguns from their holsters, they couldn't see anything to shoot at.

       Instead, we hit the other rooms as quickly as possible.  Jack did a quick one-armed chin on a closed stall in the men's room and sprayed the poor guy inside while he was reading a porno magazine.  The ultimate indignity.  Well, his nanny always told him he'd go blind if he kept that up.

       Anyway, Jack got all the fun.  I got Monsignor Bruno Tedeschi, cuffed to a chair and gagged, in a janitor's closet.  What do you know?  He had no trouble recognizing me, since I wasn't wearing the hair and beard.  I left him there, for the moment, and Jack and I carefully called out to Uncle John that all was well before we retrieved the bound guard he was replacing.

       We left the gag in the latter man's mouth while I had a quiet word with him.  There was a wood-burning stove in the main room that I made reference to several times and __in the end__ he knew a reasonable offer when he heard one.  I yanked the gag and we had a dialogue.

       I opened.  "Where's Polewicz?

       "Up at the house, I guess."  No Afrikaans accent there; strictly Toronto.

       "What do you mean, you guess?  Does he go for walks?"

       The guard shifted to ease the discomfort in his bound arms.  "Not as far as I know, he don't."

       "What about drives?" I demanded.  "Does he drive out of here at night, normally, or does he go to sleep or what?"

       This guy was strictly a shifty-eyed piece of goods.  "Nah, but you better watch your ass, eh?" he laughed.  "You hear some screaming up there sometime, like today.  He gets you, you're dead meat, but he'll take his time about it."

       "Listen to me, you little shit," I yelled into his ear.  "If that's what gives you a hard-on, you're going to look like a flagpole when I feed you into that stove feet first.  Now, don't mess with me, you fucking marshmallow, or I'll toast you good."  I emphasized the idea by grabbing his Adam's apple, digging thumb and forefinger in behind __and threatening to remove it.

       Impressed with my sincerity, he nodded as rapidly as he could __with me slowly tearing his throat out.

       "Remember, I'm coming out this way," I promised him, "so you'll be seeing me again in a little while.  Don't piss me off, pal, or you're cooked.  How many men up at the house with him?"

       He croaked, "Two."

       "Where in the house?"

       "Inna office, off the kitchen door; onna left."

       "Who else?"

       "Some blonde.  She's been here before."

       "And?"

       "And what, eh?" he asked.

       I started to dig out his left eye.  "And?"  Some days it doesn't pay to be a wise-ass.

       "STOP IT!  WAIT, PLEASE!"

       I didn't stop.  I just slowed down.  "And?"

       "And two kids, a boy and a girl," he screamed.  I left off besieging the eyeball, to give him some encouragement to go on.  "I dunno what they're there for, but I was hearing screaming all morning and again before dinner break.  Whenever the Jeep passed the house.  Don't get mad at me.  Get mad at him.  I'm just minding my own business."

       "Where?" I wanted to know.

       "Inna basement."

       "Is there an outside entrance?"

       "Nah."  He shook his head.

       "What's the fastest way in to get to the basement, dipshit?"

       He told me and then Jack casually broke his neck.

       Up until now, we had all managed to conceal our concern for Allison and Mickey __from each other if not from ourselves.  Uncle John, Jack and I had carried on.  Rather mechanically, it's true, but we had carried on with what had to be done.  Like the Duke said, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

       But I knew it had to be killing them inside.  And now this!

       "We've got to leave Dad here, Richard.  We can't take him in there with us."  Jack had the shakes, his hands trembling so badly that he had to dig them under his belt to keep them from vibrating chaotically.

       "Might as well, Jack," I agreed.  "He can hold our lifeline open here, anyway.  You're the one who has to talk him into it, though."

       What do you say to an anxious father?  "Your son and future daughter-in-law are in that house.  You wait here while we go scrape them off the walls."  I just hoped Jack could come up with some way to let his father down easy, without driving him over the brink of despair.

       We dragged the gassed guards into a heap in the main room.  Then they were handcuffed to each other, right to left, right to left, etc..  The keys were all cut differently and attached to a light chain on each belted cuff-case.  We cut the belts off them to get the keys and the pistols.

       Tedeschi was another problem.  There was one belt that had a key but no cuffs, so I used that one to loosen him from the chair.  Then I immediately cuffed him again, arms behind his back, and left the gag in place.  We took him with us and left John McGovern at the gate.

       Our supply of armaments was growing now.  Tedeschi sat in the front passenger's seat with a cap on his head and a jacket over his shoulders, while Jack shared the back with confiscated pistols, ammo, shotguns, a half-dozen machine-pistols and two automatic rifles, AR-180's.

       We drove straight to the house just like we belonged there.  Uncle John wouldn't break radio silence unless there was an emergency, but we had to promise to call him as soon as we found the kids, of course.  There was a large garage with open doors __about fifty feet from the house__ on the side away from the guards' office.  We pulled right in.

       The Monsignor was making desperate noises, so I held a knife to his throat while I pulled the duct tape away from his mouth.

       "Be careful there!" he protested, through tender lips.  "Listen, Irishman, there is something that belongs to the Church __a relic that I was entrusted with__ that I must recover.  It is just a little tin with some sacred bones inside, but to us it is priceless.  I must join you."

       Jack looked at me dubiously, remembering how Mickey and Allison had gotten into this mess and the goodly Churchman's deceitful contribution to the demise of his cousins.  On the other hand __even if he despised us__ I could sense that he was absolutely virulent in his hatred of THEM.  And he might make a decent decoy.  Who cared if he was lying through his Roman yarmulke?  The kids were all I cared about at that moment.

       I unlocked the cuffs to give him time to work the inevitable stiffness out of his shoulders and arms.

       "Ok, Tedeschi," I muttered.  "Here's the score.  You get a shotgun, one shell, a knife and a head-start to the door of the guards' office.  If you don't go directly to the door, you get shot.  If you try to load the shotgun before you get there, you get shot.  If you don't go in, you get shot.  There will be two of these on you until you go in."

       "Don't worry, Irishman.  Right now, you are Angels of the Lord to me, and there is nothing I want more than to get into that office and then get away clear.  Is that understood?"

       "You talk a good fight, Monsignor," I answered.  "Let's see how well you do it."  I think I would have clubbed him to death if he had refused.

       Jack was dumping almost all the excess firepower down what seemed to be a bottomless oil sump.  Poor Bruno!  It wasn't hard to see in his baggy eyes that he'd had plans to drop back here on his way out.  He looked up at me.  I canted my head to one side slightly and made a reproving face.  He had the good grace to look chagrined.

       "Brighten up, Bruno," I prodded him.  "They might have some hand grenades and rocket launchers in the office.  But then __if we have to blow you away__ Mother Church might just suffer the loss of Her relic.  And Her cleric.  Right now, you're just barely worth more alive than dead to me.  So don't press your luck."

       Jack kept an AR-180 on him while I equipped Tedeschi and sent him on his way.  The ejector port of the shotgun was open and to load it, all he had to do was slip the shell in the breech and press the loading port gate on the underside to close it all up, ready to fire.  Then my cousin was out the back and off like a shot toward the right-hand entrance to the house, while I kept an eye on the Monsignor going to war.

        Tedeschi was about halfway there when he heard the apparent rattle of my rifle being cocked.  What he hadn't heard was my removing the magazine beforehand.  I caught and pocketed the ejected round.  The weapon had already been loaded, cocked, and locked.

       He flinched a little at the sound, but didn't turn or change his pace.  He had nerve; I'll give him that.  The empty rifle lay on a drum, the barrel jutting out the garage door slightly, pointed at the guard-room door.  I removed the 4X4's keys and cut out the back, through the tree-line toward the rear door of the Horror Hilton.  Jesus, it looks like that house that Tony Perkins lived in, overlooking the Bates' Motel, I thought.  I checked my watch.  Jack had almost two minutes inside already, one to go unless I heard noise from downstairs or the guard office.  Tedeschi must be at the doorway now, loading the shotgun.  He'd press the loading port gate just as he opened the door in order to mask the unique sound of a slamming breech-bolt.  

       There!  The noise of the office door being rammed open hit my right ear, and I blasted the back door lock with a round from the twelve-gauge.  Standing to the left of the doorway, which opened inward, I gave the door a roundhouse kick.  No outbound fire.  Dropping to a squat, I jumped through the entrance-way and did a side roll twice, fetching up against a corridor wall.  There were windows on the corridor, so there was some light there.  No hostages; no hostiles.

       I went left, away from the office.  There was a pistol shot from that direction, then the sound of another, then a shotgun blast.  The last shot was from a pistol.  Looked bad for the Monsignor.  Well, I'd have to watch my back whether he won or lost.  No skin off my nose.

       But I was looking for the basement stairs, and then there they were.  I could see the shape of the first-to-second-floor staircase above and to the left of the doorway, which was closed.

       Thumbing the switch on the little CB, I spoke softly.  "Jack, coming down.  Over."

       "All secure here.  Check the floors above.  Out."  Ok.  I know when to follow orders and from whom to follow them, just like I know who's had all the practice in raiding crack-houses.

       Lester Polewicz's strong lean body, vicious mind and stunted soul were almost perfectly integrated, each fully engaged in a tug-of-war between natural opposites.

       His soul, so self-concerned with its own dark nature, still required innocence to despoil __as a body requires its daily bread.  That imperceptible organ was already sated and the day was far from over.

       The Polish-Canadian's mind was also completely enmeshed in the web of his even-handed betrayals.  Neither his putative employer nor the KGB were foolish enough to assume that they had bought his loyalty; yet both assumed that they held his allegiance as long as they kept an eye on him.  The Russians had been using Zenkov __like an old, comfortable shoe that they took for granted__ for that purpose, but their observer would no longer be a factor after the following day.  The revolver he had been instructed to discard would be emptied into his back.

       And Bakker's "eye," or should I say mouth, is even now getting "poked," Polewicz thought, while he began his last set of twenty reps with the free weights.  His body __as well__ was equally bound up in what are normally antithetical pursuits.  He began to grunt the count and the woman increased the force and depth of her stroke as she serviced him for the second time now, but not the pace __just as instructed.

       An educational session earlier, complete with a carrot and a stick __in that case a real carrot and a stun-baton of over a hundred thousand volts which he still kept within easy reach__ ensured that nothing would upset her concentration.  As if anything could at this point, Polewicz said to himself, remembering how she had trembled uncontrollably even when he had first pulled her from the cell.

       It was psychological terror that he loved to inflict, far more than physical pain: the rape of the spirit, the utter degradation of another human being into a dumb animal __without a trace of the consideration to be found even within a slaughter-house.

       The flame in his burning muscles and the burgeoning heat of his engorged loins needed only one more ingredient now as he watched her lips at work: the memory of her confession, while he had scraped her skin raw with antiseptic soap and stiff brush, washed her mouth and vagina with grain alcohol, coated his cock with spermicidal lubricant.  He savored that confession, even more than the memory of her pain, as he forced her to accept and acknowledge his accusations.  Repeated applications of the baton to her genitals had ensured that submission.  Now he began to imagine the spilling of his seed into her penitent mouth while her fear-fixed gaze reflected the snapping, cracking coruscation between the electrodes centered over each eye.  One spark for each while she had to repeat and admit to his indictments.  And add, "I'm sorry!"

       Ten more "reps" to go.

       He began to shout the accusations, ten in all.

       "You dirty, filthy whore!"

       Nine.  He could feel her mumbled response through his penis.

       "You diseased cock-sucker!"

       Eight.  It was going well.

       "You ignorant cunt!"

       Seven.  What!  There was a noise at the stairwell.

       Polewicz pushed the weights to full extension and_____

        The details of checking out the upper stories of Master Bates' neighborhood might bore you.  The whirling two-handed firing stance of TV heros and FBI men had little to do with it.  I didn't check out the office first; just jammed a wooden chair under the door-knob on the corridor side.  The back door got locked with a waist-high bookcase jammed between it and the corridor wall.

       The upper floors were empty.

       I snuck into the guard office through the outside door, advancing in a silent swan-like squat with the shotgun ready to go.

       I radioed Jack, "All clear.  Tedeschi's gone.  No hostages here.  Two hostiles down.  Over."

       "All clear here.  Kids in good shape.  You've got to see the rest to believe it.  Come on down.  Out."

       Uncle John chimed in, "Heard that, boys.  Just get them out quick.  Over and out."  

       I went through the door and turned left, down the wooden staircase, mindful of the strange sobbing and groaning noises that were coming back up.  And the salty scent of sweat, maybe blood.

       A third of the way down the long straight flight, there was an extra squeak____from above me.  It hit me like a blast of icy air.

       Tedeschi?

       Who was there?  How was he armed?

       One step at a time, I kept on descending into Hell.

       Another squeak from above.

       Another step to take below.

       I couldn't handle the uncertainty.

       At the next noise from the top of the staircase____

       I turned around slowly, carefully and looked back up the steps.

       Nobody!

       Gone?

       Never there?

        Nobody!

       The kids weren't in the room downstairs, but Diana was.  And Polewicz, too.  Both of them were buck-naked at the other end of a large exercise room.  When she saw me she turned her head away __ashamed maybe, humiliated certainly.  Each wrist was still bound with hospital restraints to a wooden bar in front of a long mirror, both running down the entire length of the wall to my right.

       Not before then did I realize I had really loved her __more than a little anyway__ even if I hadn't trusted her.  But there was no love, no pity left in me now.  And even if there had been, I would have wasted it all on myself.  __Some blonde.  She's been here before....  __Ms. Stuart?...  __I've met him....  and the anti-bug device in her room?

       Right in front of Diana was a weight bench with Polewicz lying on his back.  Naked, as I said.  A stun baton __just like mine__ lay on the floor by his right side, and some corresponding vampire-like burn marks on Diana's torso.  I suspected that there would also be others where they wouldn't show as easily.

       The skinny bastard was bleeding from a gash on the side of his head but it didn't seem to worry him too much.  Not right then.  The weird ululation was still coming from him __Diana was silent__ for another reason.

       Lester Polewicz might also be dying slowly from the weights that were crushing his smashed chest, but like the head gash, that seemed unimportant.  And he still had a penis, but just barely.  It was mangled and torn to a bloody mess, but it was still attached.  It didn't take too much imagination to figure how he had gotten his jollies or the price he had paid for them.  There was semen on the floor by his left sneaker and some blood-tinged vomit next to it, where she must have retched.

       Jack walked into the room.  "We've still got to get them out of their cells, Dick.  There's a glass window in each door, but it's soundproof and shatterproof, and the deadbolts are security-locked.  They both look all right, though."

       Diana suddenly spoke up, her eyes still averted, her voice harsh and strange.  "They can't be.  They were screaming their lungs out in that room across the hall.  It came over the loudspeaker in the cell.  All morning and half the afternoon.  He threatened me with the things he did to them.  He said he'd cut her nipples off and worse____and castrated the boy.  It sounded terrible."

       I cut her loose and glanced back at Jack __who shrugged and said, "Doesn't look like it."

       "What happened to the slug here?" I asked him.

       "Your girlfriend did it, without any help.  What with bench-pressing a couple of hundred pounds at the time, he was at a slight disadvantage."

       "Looks like he forgot about safe-sex."

       "Yeah," he said.  "A real pity about that."

       I leaned over Polewicz.  "No pain, no gain, buddy.  It could be a lot worse.  Tell me where the cell keys are, or it will be."

       Stubborn silence, except for the banshee's wail.

       "He didn't answer you, Dick."

       "No, he didn't.  Maybe he can't.  Give me a hand."  We lifted the weights by the ends of the bar and placed them on the bench stand.

       "What about it, Lester?"

       "Fuck you!" he said slowly with a forced, but still nasty smile____and a wheeze.

       I was already fondling an Explorer boot knife in my right hand.  "There's a game, Lester, called Progressive Circumcision, where we take a slice at a time off your abused cock.  You'd better hope that we're neat carvers if you plan on holding out for more than an inch or two."  He remembered where the key locker was when we couldn't agree on which end of his penis to start the cutting at and Diana won the toss.

       While Jack let his brother and his lady out, Diana got her clothing from her open cell.

       I walked into the "interrogation" room.

        It was a small library, with bookshelves, sound system and VCR/TV set and a recliner.  The tapes in the case next to the set had titles like "SNUFF CITY" and "DISSECTING DARLENE."  I didn't have to guess where the screaming originated.  I suppose that Lester was a mite too squeamish to provide his own screamers.  Rather decent and clever of him, actually.  Economical, even.  Sadism for the anal-retentive personality.  I wanted to laugh with relief __as well as with the morbid humor of the situation__ but none of the others would have forgiven me.

       Mickey and Allison looked at each other as though each had risen from the dead.  Both had caved in and spilled their guts to save the other any more of all that torture that was supposedly going on.

       Allison had never seen them and didn't actually associate them __as people__ with the screaming she had heard, so she didn't give them a second glance.  She passed us all by on the way to the bathroom.

       I sent them all upstairs before I left, warning Jack to keep an ear cocked for anything that squeaked.  I thought some stormy music might be appropriate and ensure some privacy, as well, so I found some Wagner and turned the sound up.

       "Lester."  I had to shout over the music.  

       I moved closer to the bench to which he was now tied.

       "You're helpless.  You're alone and you're defenseless.  You sat on the lady's face and generally abused her, but you didn't hurt my family.  In fact, your guys actually saved their lives.  And I'm probably as responsible for Diana Stuart being down here as you are.  So what do I do with you?  Frankly, you're a problem for me, Lester.  And the authorities will be here soon."  His eyes were upside-down, and aimed at mine.

       He had to force a grunt to make any significant noise.  There were certainly multiple rib fractures from the dropped weights and internal bleeding.  "So?"

       "So," I yelled, "I wanted to ask you about two kids who got killed over on God's River.  They got caught at the Farm, last month.  They were there with Tedeschi."

       "I hope they were your only fucking sons, you cocksucker."

       "Why, Lester?"  I tapped his ribs with the shotgun stock to focus his thoughts on the subject at hand.  He screamed.

       But he was still angry after he got his breath back.  "Because Orlando butt-fucked a little kid and blamed it on them.  And then they got their pricks ripped off and were torn to shreds by some angry Indians.  The women are the worst, I hear.  So fuck you!"

       He was exaggerating now.  The kids hadn't been castrated.  That was about the only indignity they hadn't suffered.

       "I hear you, Lester."  But just barely over the concealing music.  He was almost giving me time to feel sorry for him.  Until I thought of him with Diana.  "But I can't believe you're this stupid."

       "I'll get you, you fucking bastard," he shouted.  "I'll get away and I'll get you.  You marked me.  I was perfect and you marked me.  This is my country, you Irish bastard or whatever you are.  I'll get you, sooner or later.  Tomorrow it starts.  You don't know where; you don't know how, and you can't stop it.  You and that whore will get it.  Real slow.  No jail can hold me."

       "Lester_____Lester"  Mock pity.  "You've still got me mixed up with somebody else, somebody who gives a shit about your rights.  Thanks for making this easier."  

       I nearly got a hernia lifting those weights at that angle and I was overly self-conscious at almost having to straddle his head.  The bar made a slight sickening noise on contact __probably nowhere near as bad as the screams on video-tape must sound, but a lot more final.  It's hard to characterize the expression on his upside-down face at the time.  No screaming, anyway, with a couple of hundred pounds bearing down.  None that I could hear over the "Ride of the Valkyries," at any rate.

       But his neck was now about an inch high and the better part of a foot wide.

       Finally, I untied the laces that had bound his body to the bench and wiped my prints off the weight bar, replacing them with his.  No sense deluding myself though, that Polewicz's death would seriously be taken for any kind of suicide.

       For that matter, his death wouldn't be taken seriously, period.  It was just an anti-climax, that's all.  There's no such thing as posthumous self-importance.

       Time to go.

       Uh-oh!  A call came in from Uncle John.  "There's two loaded trucks coming down the road; maybe the night shift.  No flags."  He forgot the procedural "Over," but that's all right.  At least he remembered to wait a bit to talk after pushing the button, and released it promptly when he was through.

        Damn!  I'd been hoping that the shifts had changed at four PM, the traditional time.

       "Roger.  I read back: hostiles coming.  Retreat back here, Uncle.  I say again: fall back.  Bring the vehicle.  We can always cut our way out if we're together.  Out."

       Uncle John's comment on flags reminded me of something I shouldn't have forgotten.  Could these be Canadian Army Forces, moving in finally?  No!  Their communications __little better than babble__ were coming in on the guards' channel.  The scanner was silent except for that channel.  Both Mobile Command Defence Force and R.C.M.P. frequencies had been pre-punched into the sampling schedule.

       The good guys must have left for early supper.

       It would take some time for the new batch of guards to question their daisy-chained brethren.  It was a foregone conclusion, of course, that they would want to have some idea of what they were getting into.  I know: an assumption is not a foregone conclusion.  That's the way it turned out, anyway.

       "How many?" I wanted to know first.

       Uncle John had just pulled up outside the garage, where we were all assembled.  "It looked like seven or eight men; just the two small trucks.  They both stopped at the gate, blocking it."

       "Well, we've got four-wheel drive.  And these!"  I walked over to a peg-board section of the back wall and pulled off a large and a small bolt-cutter, throwing one in each vehicle.  It was late twilight now, but I had my lensatic compass with its phosphorescent markings.  All we had to do was get to the borderline five minutes before the bad guys.

       It wasn't that we couldn't win the battle.  It was more that any serious casualties in our ranks now were unthinkable, after all we'd come through unharmed.

       I used a flash briefly with my back turned, to check the aerial photo again.  They'd guard the gate with three or four men, while they dispatched their two 4X4's with two men each to locate us.  Those vehicles would converge at the sound of gunfire, with radio coordination.  Their windshields would be folded down in front, for clearer night vision without lights and for a clear field of fire in front.

       "Aah."

       "I've heard that tone before, Nephew.  What dookering are you doing now, you rajed grauer."  Crazy know-it-all, that is.

       At least one of us would get killed in the open unarmored vehicles if we tried to storm a strong point or were ambushed.  Yet our pathways were limited, so an ambush was not out of the question.  The mobile hostiles would be flanking us, I thought __and their strong point would be at the gate.  Again, the mobile forces would converge if one of them was engaged.  And only two paths converged on the clearing in front of the old Bates' House.

       But would they check with the gatehouse?  No, the best and the brightest would be on the attack.  They wouldn't defer to anybody they had set guarding the gate.  But what if they checked with each other before coming to the other's aid?  That was a fifty-fifty proposition, and I had to deal with the possibility that they would.

       "Aaah."

       "Get ready, Jack, the idjit's going to throw a fit any second now."

       I did.  "Jack, Mickey!" I barked.  "Get that roll of wire on the wall.  How many turns does it have?"

       Mickey got to it first.  "Thirty, Uncle."  The roll was about a foot in diameter; a hundred feet or so.

       "Cut it in half __at turn fifteen__ with the bolt cutters.  Let it hang open like an accordion so you get an even division."

       "Ok, it's cut," he said.  "What now?"

        "Both of you run as quietly as you can up the side of each path leading to here.  Stay close to the tree-line and off the gravel.  About a hundred feet up, tie the wire across the pathway, chest high.  Crawl over the gravel quietly to get across and then get right back here."

       As soon as they got back I picked-up two of the guards' radios and taped their talk buttons down.  I yelled, "They're coming this way now," into the mikes and we started the mock battle between shotguns and the AR-180's.  It was transmitted over the open mikes also, effectively jamming their CB channel.

       They both crashed the party.  But we never got to fire a shot in anger.

       The guys on one of the four-wheelers, a Toyota Land Cruiser, I think, broke their necks to get to the battle, literally.  They were dead and their vehicle arrived in the clearing without them, hitting the house itself and exploding.  Fortunately, we were behind the tree-line and well away from the house, split up to cover each approach with a cone-shaped field of fire where the enemies would meet.

        But the other driver had been too lazy to lower the windshield for tactical work, so he had saved his neck.  Still, the shock to the man's nervous system from the wire slapping the windshield and combing his hair, was great enough to send his vehicle straight into a tree.  The jerk's unconscious body was the only one we found, so he might have been alone.  We disarmed and left him there, and Jack pulled the 4X4's secondary ignition wires out and threw them up into a tree, just in case.

       No sign of more assailants.

       We were extra careful, anyway, on the way to cutting our way out at the south side of the property.  After all that, any blunder could still kill us.  The downed balloon was our first stop, but the crazy pilot had gotten loose by himself apparently.  He was nowhere to be found.  Or avoiding us like the plague.  I wouldn't blame him.

       When we drove through the cut fencing, I summed it up for us all.  "Piece of cake!"  

       Diana drove with me and the McGoverns and Allison traveled in the other vehicle.  The ride back was a bitter-cold one.

       ELPHINGSTOKE, MANITOBA

       Orlando was submerged in a depression as the float plane carrying him touched down on its home base at the Farm.

       He thought, It's not right.  I should have finished him off like an animal in pain and not left him like that.  It's always the same.  The same temper, over and over.  And Casals was an old friend, too.  Better I had put him down, like a sick dog, or had one of the men do it.

       And there had been no young boys in the village either.  They'd all fled this time.  Orlando wondered why; how they had known to leave.  And he continued to ponder those things as they approached the floating dock.

       No matter; he thought, I must now meet the Frenchmen and deliver my deadly package to them in Winnipeg.  There would be no time, for days at least, to go back to the village.  By then it would be too late to ease his old companion's pain.  Although, the Metis' might return.  With their children.  Maybe.

       Just beyond the shoreline, a large crowd of civilians and guards __unarmed guards__ were waiting for him.  They all had luggage lying about.

       "Get back to work!" he demanded at once.  "What is this nonsense?"

       Those addressed responded only by milling around, and he turned from the farmhands and their families to the unarmed guard force.  "Where are your weapons?  What is the meaning of this."

       Emil Orlando was outraged.  And he carried an automatic weapon.

       One of his South African sergeants explained in their typical, slightly British, somewhat Dutch accent with its guttural overtones.  "They came yesterday, sir.  The Army.  We are entirely encircled by them, they say.  The roads are blockaded, at any rate; that we know."

       Orlando had flown in from the north, well out of sight of any roads larger than foot-trails.  The entire Russian Army could have been sheltered in the woods __unseen by him or the pilot__ beneath the spruce trees.

       "What do they want, then?" Orlando asked the man.

       "They told us by____"  The other struggled with his English.  "loud-hailer, I think, from a helicopter, that we had to leave.  One by one, through the main gate, sir, with just hand luggage __they said.  No guns, no vehicles."

       "When?  Is there a deadline, man?"

       "Fourteen hundred hours, sir.  Two PM."

       "I know what fourteen hundred hours is, you idiot."  Orlando was panicking now, one fear of discovery overwhelmed by a more immediately drastic one.  "Did they ask for me?  By name I mean.  Well?"

       "I don't think so, sir," the sergeant said, trying to recall the exact words."

       "Get my plane fueled up.  At once! Sergeant."

       The empty-handed security guard looked nervously at Orlando's ready assault rifle and said, "Yes, sir.  Right away, sir.  But Captain Lebride tried to leave in the other plane, sir."  The sergeant started to hem and haw and fiddle around with his feet.

       "Well, what is it, man?" Orlando insisted, prodding the other man with the rifle.  "What happened to Lebride?  Did he get away?  Well?  Answer me, damn you!"

       "He never made it off the water, Mr. Orlando.  The plane was loaded pretty heavy and he needed most of the lake to take off, sir."

       "And what?  What happened then, Sergeant?  I saw no wreckage."

       "Two gunships, sir.  Captain's plane was shot to splinters, sir, and then there was a fireball.  Nothing left to see.  I have to go now, sir, and get my woman."

       Orlando was in such a state of shock that the guard under his gun simply and gently pushed the barrel aside and walked off.  He shivered to think that they might have taken him down on the way in.  He looked across the lake, above the trees.  The narrow outlines of the two attack copters hovering there jolted his spine and broke his stasis.  They must have spotted him early on and bird-dogged his plane right in.  Biding their time like spiders in a web, was the dreaded image.  Orlando trembled now, the late-morning chill piercing his leather jacket as suddenly as an icy bullet.

       Nothing for it then __time to go to ground, he thought, and hope for the best.  He'd long since prepared his bolt-hole with all the  necessities to see him through an entire winter, if required.  Well, almost all of the necessities, he reckoned.

       But edging over toward the cover of the forest canopy, he noticed a young boy by the tree-line, just waiting around for some direction in all the confusion.

       About ten years old, his perfectly formed, the smoothly rounded belly and slim, but jutting, hips distracted the pederast.  With a baby-fat chin, beautiful lips and blond hair, the boy reminded Orlando of the child actor in "Shane."  Orlando had fallen in love with that movie____and with that boy.  And his covetous eyes had been on this child for almost a year now.

       Even as the lover in him reveled in his exhilaration, he felt saddened by the eventual tragedy that must come about.  Orlando cursed in his heart the nation that had sheltered him, both for the implacability of its attitude toward his kind, and the inevitable requirements that ruthless implacability imposed on him for his own survival.

       Despite that melancholy, the man called softly to the boy from within the woods, where he wouldn't be seen by the others.  The exotic mixture of love and despair, heart-pounding fear and libidinous thrill was long familiar to him and he might have been disappointed now, were he at liberty to express his desires as he once had so freely in North Africa.

       The beautiful boy did not hear him over the bustle of the general departure around him.  Orlando raised his voice only slightly and called out to him again.

       EDMONTON, ALBERTA

       "It wasn't a bad dream, was it?"

       "No," I answered.

       "I mean, you smothering me with that pillow."

       "No."

        "Why?" she asked.  "And then why rescue me?"  Mixed signals, I guess you'd call it.

       "I didn't know you were there," I confessed, "or that you were a captive."

       Diana would not let it go, damn her.  "If I was there, how could I not be a captive?"

       "You've been there before, I hear.  And Polewicz's man, when he killed the intruder in the room, he called your name.  You were just a bundle of bedclothes in a dark room, but he knew your name."

       "Well, that's the room I always stay in when I'm in town," she said.  "So if he was watching it, why wouldn't he know who was in it?"

       "You're still not telling me the truth."

       She was indignant.  "You're calling me a liar?"

       "Damned straight!  He wasn't watching the room.  He didn't even know I was there.  He'd followed the intruder there.  But he knew you were there.  You said you didn't know Polewicz, that you worked in Ungava Bay.  How would he know you were there?"

       "____All right, I knew Polewicz," she admitted.  "We had a couple of dates last year.  That's all."

       "Bullshit.  You're going to be in jail for twenty years unless you can come up with something better than that."

       "The Hell with you!  Stop this thing and let me out, you shit."

       "What about it?  The room?  Out with it!"

       "All right, you bastard," she screamed into the wind.  "We had a thing going, off and on, for a while.  He's got the room next door at the hotel, and screw you, too!"

       "You already did, in more ways than one.  One way or another, those two kids and I almost got killed because you lied to me."

       "What now?"  Was that real grief I heard?  I hoped not.  If she wasn't the two-timing bitch I suspected, then what I was doing was unforgivable.

       "You're collecting your stuff from the hotel and getting aboard a plane to Seattle," I told her.  "They'd probably run you in if you tried to get into the country without any ID or luggage.  Probing you in unpleasant places for condoms full of cocaine, at the very least.  That's the only reason we're going back to the hotel at all."

       "And I don't get a choice in the matter?"

       "Yeah.  A year in jail awaiting trial, if you're found innocent.  Twenty, if you're not."

       "It's how you found us, isn't it?" she accused, her voice shrill, her mouth distended.  "You can't take it.  You'd like to do the same things he did, but you're not man enough to admit it.  If I went down on you right now, you couldn't get it up.  You'd be too scared just thinking I liked his better.  Admit it! you bald-headed freak.  What do you know?  You don't know anything about me!  Polewicz is just a half-assed pervert and he's still twice the man you are.  The hell with both of you!"

       Somewhere inside, some poor sonofabitch was crying __looking down a short road for two to a living hell.  The rest of me had taken the last turn-off.  She'd betrayed me from the beginning and I'd betrayed her right to the end; so we didn't even have that to look forward to.

       Diana made a half-hearted grab for the steering wheel and I squeezed her fist____hard.  Frightened, she just gazed at me for a minute or two.  Finally she said, "What are you thinking now, Alan.  How do you feel about me and Lester?____like that, I mean____you know."

       "Frozen."

       "You're blaming me, because he forced himself on me?  That's not right."  She sounded incredulous.

       "No, it isn't.  But we don't have any future together, because we can't trust each other.  I don't have to be noble about all this.  There's no point to it.  So I'm frozen where you're concerned.  A man who wasn't frozen might just put you out of his misery.  Nothing personal," I assured her.  And maybe we have no future, anyway, because I think I'm going to die when this thing is finally over.  I might as well get used to that idea.  At least this way, it won't be you, Diana.

       "And Lester Polewicz?  Would you kill him, too?  Or, have you already?"

       "No offense, Diana, but I'd need a reason to kill him, a good reason."  There's such a thing as playing it too close to the chest, I guess, but telling her the truth never occurred to me.

       We escorted the lady into, through, and out of the hotel like a Columbian drug-lord, and then I saw her to the plane myself so I could watch it take off.

        "So.  This is it then, Alan.  Or is it Richard?"

       I said, "Whatever.  I guess this is it, yes.  I got you into that scene at Stony Plain, one way or another, and I don't think either one of us wants to be reminded about it all the time.  No matter what the real story is.  All that really counts is that we've each got our own agenda and together we're only a footnote on it.  I know that as surely as you do, even if I don't know what your agenda is."

       "Jesus, you don't trust me even now," she cried.  "I trusted you, you son of a bitch, you liar!"  There were real tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, glistening in the terminal lights.  Tears of regret?  Defeat?  Frustration?  Despair?

       "Maybe you did, lady.  Maybe you did."  I shook my head slowly.  "And if that's the case, look where it got you."

        She left on the Redeye, bound for Vancouver and Seattle as it lifted in the night-time fog.  Sometimes, when you kick a country man's chimney, it really is rotten, and the whole god-damned thing falls apart and slides off the roof.  It's a shock when it happens, even though you know it's bound to someday.  The only thing you can do is scram, telling him you'll be back with a full crew in the morning.

       If I'm lucky, Diana will be just one more regret in a long line of regrets before too long.  I started that night to build a wall around her memory.

                             *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

       My prisoner interrupted me for the last time.  This was the afternoon now and I had missed the first available flight_____just so I could finish with him.  For some reason I was held captive by him, as much or more of a captive as he.

       It's not like I owe him anything, I thought, puzzled by my indecisiveness.  And there was only one more sure shot left for me to get out of the country clean and back to the protection of my own kind.

       Undesirable Alien.  It gave me a chill, that term; yet, that's what I was now.  And I had a hunch that if they found me, the authorities wouldn't just deport me.  Instead, they'd lose me for the rest of a very short life.  After a very brief consideration, they would have decided that I knew too much.

       But now my captive audience wanted to know something personal about me.  To Hell with you, Father.

       "And do you really feel nothing for this woman, as you claim, my son?" he asked me.

       You unctuous bastard.  I snapped back, "I've told you before: don't call me that, you God-damned son of a bitch.  You've killed my family: you've plotted treason and subversion: you've betrayed the people who trusted you."  Jesus!  I wanted to finish him off with the shotgun stock, then and there.  I went outside and walked my anger off until midnight.

       When I came in to get my sleeping bag, he got another shot at me.  This time I didn't have a chance.

       The priest looked up at me in the flashlight's beam and his face belonged on a crucifix.  "You were right," he said, in anguish.  "I have done all that you have said.  But it was done from ignorance and weakness, and not for evil purpose.  I must hope that God will forgive me, even if you cannot.  Perhaps He will forgive you, as well, even if she will not.  I will pray for that."

       I could say nothing to him then, but the next morning I went on with the tale of the "Orphans" and the terrible turn of events that had overwhelmed "Canadian Shield."

       And he was mindful not to mention the stark dreams that had troubled my sleep and, even afterward, clouded my eyes.

Chapter 26

"Here patriots live, who, for their country's good,

In fighting fields, were prodigal of blood:

Priests of unblemish'd lives here make abode,

And poets worthy their inspiring god;

And searching wits, of more mechanic parts,

Who grac'd their age with new-invented arts:"

Aeneid, Virgil

        EDMONTON, ALBERTA:

       "Tomorrow it starts," he'd said.  "You don't know where; you don't know how, so you can't stop it."

       It's odd: that's not what I dreamed about, but that's what I remembered first thing in the morning.  My dreams had been troubled but those memories were in the background.  There had been more mirrors with cold fire but no coffins.  This time it was Christ impaled on His Cross.  Not in the Turkish fashion, but with the pointed cross piercing His chest from back to front.  His face defined agony as gnome-like creatures scuttled back and forth to slice splinters from His pedestal for the Easter marketplace.

       Come night-time, I was still not a happy camper.

       But the phrasing of Polewicz's last testament had priority in haunting me.  The implication was that if I knew where and how, I could stop it personally.  Stop what?

       I put it on the back burner to simmer.

       Meanwhile, it took more than a few minutes to get my data and messages for Gerardo Laguna.  There was quite a bit of data there, with the Stony Plain telephone number and the digit "2" starting it.  My virus had made another night-time call.

       A quick browse of the initial files just came up with a Lotus spread-sheet, of obvious significance, with some dates and code-names.  The one for that day was "Armageddon."  In two days, there would be a "Riel," and in five, a "Montcalm."  The viral worm tended to dig for security levels and raid the most restricted files first.

       Ok.  Armageddon, I thought, that's religious.  So it's right here in Edmonton, where the Council of Churches is meeting tomorrow.  Tomorrow, not today.  What's going on today?  Who's still loose?  According to Morty, the Institute's surrounded; the Farm's surrounded.

       Then again, according to Morty, Stony Plain had been surrounded.  Anyway, that would account for all of the players, except Zenkov and Tedeschi.  But Tedeschi wasn't on their side.

What was Zenkov doing today?

       Jesus, he was meeting a living Icon, the heart and soul of the Ukrainian Catholics, at the airport.  Where anything could happen.  It has to be Zenkov.

        But what do I do?  I've got no proof.  I can walk away and all it means to me is that some old man gets killed.  Nobody's paying me to babysit him and I've got enough to worry about.

       I resolved to worry about me and mine first and let the rest of the world go to hell.

       At the airport, I called in two bomb scares; one on the Patriarch's limousine, the other at Mundare.  The People's Francophone Liberation Front, whoever they might be, got full credit for both.  Then I waited, wearing my coverall and carrying a clipboard and pocket-protector full of Bic pens.  I was waiting for Zenkov to arrive, with some idea of putting him out of action with an apparent heart attack __the pepper spray.  He'd been described to me as Bugs Bunny, in a priestly cassock.  It wasn't likely I'd miss him.

       There was already a big crowd of well-wishers there, placards, flowers and all, when Zenkov bustled down the corridor toward the arrivals terminal.  There were three bruisers with him.  -Shit-

       I cut across their path just as the group reached the edge of the crowd.  Out came the pocket-size pepper canister.

        Two went down from the spray, but one of them blocked the can with his body and pulled it from my grasp as he fell.  I kicked him away while the third bodyguard brushed a just-then-comprehending Zenkov back, on his way to getting at me.

       The oncoming bruiser met the clipboard half-way and the edge smashed up into his Adam's apple.  My foot swept his raised leg aside when he went to put his weight on it, and he went down with a crash.

       People were turning to look at him, squirming on the floor with a crushed larynx.  The other two were quiet by comparison, but then they didn't have much air or energy to waste on shouting or squirming either, just on muted coughing.

       A dangerous distraction!  Zenkov was pulling a gun, and fast.  I grabbed his gun-arm wrist __the right__ with my left hand and tried to hold it away from me.

       He fired one round.  Somebody screamed.

       I kicked him in the knee and tried a stiff-arm under the jaw.  But the bastard had the strength of a madman __he slipped my blow and I hit the wall with the heel of my hand, off-balance.

        I felt his leg behind mine and then I was on the floor with the toughest fucking rabbit-priest in the world trying to kill me and coming close.  My left hand was still holding his right wrist, trying to keep the gun pointed away.  Another round went off.  No scream this time except that of a ricochet.  

       Zenkov was winning.  The gun was coming closer and I was losing strength rapidly.  He was kneeling on my groin and the left arm was extended straight down holding my right arm across my chest.

       I fumbled for one of the uncapped pens and kicked him in the left kidney with my right knee.  My left hand suddenly reversed direction __pulling his gun across my chest and over to my right__ before he could put enough of his battle-extended tactile control back into his trigger finger.

       So the knee did the job, and we rolled over with me on top and a Bic pen stuck four inches deep into the bogus priest's left eye, right through it into the brain.  His feet were drumming a marching tattoo on the floor even as the round-shouldered torso tried __despite my weight__ to arch upwards on two bent elbows.  Shutting out the grotesque sight of his punctuated face, I grabbed the gun away from a dying, convulsing hand by the short barrel and rolled off him __exhausted, completely, even to the eyelids.

       The blinkers were still closed when I felt the gun kicked from my grasp.  When they opened again they saw two Mounties, in their full scarlet tunics, jodhpurs and campaign hats.  Two service revolvers were aimed directly at my eyes.  Otherwise, I might have applauded their brave display.

       I closed one eye for perspective, and then the other.  Yes, a gun was pointing at each of them.  The traditional lanyards ran from the bottom of the hand-grip up to a noose-like knot around their necks, and the huge flaps on their holsters were still doing their flapping thing.  Whoever designed their uniforms must have been butter-fingered.

       They wouldn't have seen the humor in that, so I didn't say anything __for a change.  I might have been a little giddy from the excitement, anyway.

       Finally, Zenkov sank into death next to me.  For all of his shaking and rattling, there hadn't been any screaming.  He had been one tough bastard, for a rabbit.  I started to laugh, thinking about Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.  The Mounties were sure that I was going to run amuck, of course.

       Nobody performed a tracheotomy under the crushed larynx and the two armed clothes-horses ignored my half-hearted offer.  So the third guard died, on my right __his boss's body on the other side of me.

        No thunder.  Either the Lady was slipping or Zenkov didn't qualify.  Unless you count the jet noise, which I thought was stretching it.  I felt safe enough.  Except for the guns trained on me and the nasty mob screaming for my blood.

       "Shit, I can't let you out of my sight without you screwing something up, you shanty Irish bastard."  Morty was really pissed at me.  We were in the headquarters of the Edmonton Police, not the Mounties.  It was their jurisdiction, and a dozen of them had been barely enough to keep me from being lynched at the airport as I was led away in cuffs __soaked by a rainfall of spittle and deafened by the ranting chorus of a thousand Slavic curses.

       I tried to look contrite.  At least they had taken the cuffs off at the station and given me some coffee.  

       "It's a good thing there weren't any prints of yours on the grip or frame of that gun, ass-hole."  Morty was relenting a little.  I hoped that he just might manage to spring me.  "But they've got you real good on tape with those bomb scares.  That phony French accent wouldn't fool anybody.  I recognized you right off."

       I smiled innocently.

       "All right," he admitted, chagrined, "you were lucky, Dick.  The voice-prints didn't match.  I wish I knew how you did that."

       We still didn't know what "Riel" was, or "Montcalm," but that wasn't my problem now; it was theirs.  From the names, I assumed that the locations would be Winnipeg and Montreal __and said as much to the few in authority who were willing to listen.  

       Now that "Armageddon" had proved out, at least some of them were willing to take the rest seriously.  Personally, I think it was because they now had code-names.  Uniforms are nuts about code-names.

       Two days later, the other shoe dropped.  A scheme had fallen through at a Council Meeting of the Assembly of First Nations __read Indians__ in Winnipeg.  A plot had been uncovered to poison their banquet with tiny pellets of nicotine in place of capers in the salad.  The pure nicotine was supposed to have come from the Farm, which was now surrounded by the Canadian Army.  The assassins, using their initiative, immediately tried to buy some other deadly poison from an undercover narcotics cop.

       They were French nationals __mercenaries all__ who had counted on disappearing and leaving behind nothing but blame for the French-Canadians.  The Frenchmen were to be paid by letter of credit, in Europe, on presenting three valid published reports of a least a dozen deaths among the Indian and Meti  leadership.  Man, that's one cold-blooded banker!

       "Montcalm" never turned up at all for sure; although there was an incident in Montreal on the right date.  A Canadian Ministry of Defense staff car ran over three Quebecer children under suspicious circumstances.  Two were killed and the city ran amuck for almost a week.  If they hadn't all been brave military types at that conference, it would have broken up and the rest of the Compact with it.  Or if there had been other incidents that couldn't be hushed up.  

       Had all of the planned atrocities occurred, and the First Canadian Nations had seceded, followed by the Quebecers, supported by the Ukrainians, not one dignitary, scholar, civil servant or businessman would have remained in attendance at the Aurora Compact.

       Not one foreigner, not one Canadian citizen would have retained a shred of confidence in the sovereignty of the Confederation.  The Maple Leaf would have fallen.

       I should have felt a sense of accomplishment.  But Polewicz and Zenkov now seemed even smaller in death than in life, and there was none.  Had that unholy pair gotten a few more breaks and achieved a greater success, they might have made decent enemies.  Perhaps not a Stalin or a Hitler, but who knows?  Then, of course, they might have prevailed.

       As it is, for better or worse, Polewicz and Zenkov are dead and the Aurora Compact is now a fact of life.  Someday, Canada and the U.S.A. may become one nation if we both can find a way to accommodate __yet respect__ our differences.

       ELKPRONG, ALBERTA:

       The Gang of Five, plus three.  What an ill-assorted set we made.

       There was Morty, Tedeschi and I, along with a senior officer of the R.C.M.P., "D" Division.  At least he was senior enough to be wearing a pear-shaped, Saville Row, three-piece suit, half-boots tucked under his trousers.  The others insisted on addressing him as "Assistant Commissioner," accent on the first word.

       And a two-star military type: a lieutenant among the four-star generals of this world; a general among its lieutenants, the commanding officer of the Canadian Army's Mobile Command.  He was also in "mufti," but obviously resenting his lack of bureaucratic body armor, as sore as if he had been physically skinned.

       A third suit was wrapped around the Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, whose two vested aides sat with him, complete with two briefcases each.  They, it turned out, were on temporary loan from the Ministry of State for Science and Technology.

       I was still a little manic from all the action, followed by two days of absolutely nothing, so I had been baiting the "suits," just a little bit.  Oh, yes!  We were in a Bell helicopter, a beefed-up Model 230, on the way to the Institute's headquarters building at Elkprong.  The Army and the Mounties hadn't wanted anyone else along, but then they hadn't wanted to associate with each other, either.  The Prime Minister had given them no choice.  I was there as Morty's aide.  He snuck me in.

       I don't know exactly why Tedeschi was allowed to be in the group, but I suppose that the Government was painfully aware of just how far along the New World Institute had gotten with their plan before the foreign aid had arrived.  And it was absolutely true: the Monsignor had been the first one on the scene.  The rest of us were just bird-dogging him.

       It could have also been that we were there to embarrass the lower level powers-that-be.  And I did my usual workman-like job at it.  But, in truth, the barely civil servants, the army and the police were there to negotiate __and the rest of us were just there to listen them do it.

       There was little conversation in the cabin, on the way in.  What little there was, seemed to be just snide bickering anyway.  Very occasional, nasty little spurts of it.  A lot of noses in Ottawa must have been very far out of joint.

       Even Chaucer couldn't have gotten any more out of that trip than writer's block.

       We landed on the Institute's heli-pad, between the satellite dishes and a huge ventilator at the other end of the roof.  There was about a hundred feet of clearance between them.  An approaching storm generated some treacherous cross-winds for the pilot to deal with.

       Theodore Langerhans met us personally.  The red, wind-blown head was appropriately bowed to avoid the headsman's ax that was still whirling around, a good six feet above it.  There he was, the perfect penitent __wringing his hands in obvious despair over all of Polewicz's mad plans.

       He and Cecil were just aghast, etc..

       I was not in a good mood, but that should be no surprise.

       In Phaethon's lavish penthouse office, the kid-skin gloves came off on both sides.  The Mountie told them, "We know all about your slime mold.  Monsignor Tedeschi has cooperated with us and we have incontrovertible evidence of its effects and an analysis of its genetic formulation."  Phaethon stared down at the floor, avoiding the Assistant Commissioner's fish-eye stare, but not Langerhans.

        "This installation," the cop continued, "as well as the Farm at Elphingstoke, is not merely surrounded.  You're all quarantined  and anyone trying to escape will be shot to death.  We know about the guns at the Farm.  We know about the underground bunkers here, as well.  This man," that was I, "has given testimony to your personal involvement in every level of this traitorous scheme."

       Minuscule beads of sweat suddenly broke out on Phaethon's forehead and a gratifying scent of fear tinged the conditioned air within the room.  The renowned scientist protested his innocence of treason.  He wasn't even a citizen of Canada, he said.  

       The Lieutenant-General smiled contentedly to encourage him in his delusion.  "Mr. Phaethon, the Mounties and the courts get traitors.  The Army gets spies and saboteurs.  Our Judge Advocate-General says that this was not only an insurrection, but also an Act of War.  And it doesn't matter whether it was conducted by a foreign corporation or a government."

       He pointed accusingly at Phaethon under steel-gray eyes.  "So you," he jabbed at his target and repeated, "you are a foreign spy in time of war.  Langerhans over there could get life imprisonment for his actions.  You __on the other hand__ we just might shoot you before we're through."

       "Well, of course, General_____"  Phaethon was sweating heavily now; Langerhans' assurances forgotten.  "Listen, please: there is a considerable amount of research here that has been carried out under my personal direction.  Research that is of inestimable value to mankind; research that must be carried on."

       I put in my two cents.  "All that will get you is a last cigarette, Cecil, and a reduction in sentence for your post-docs who do all the real work anyway."

       The Security Director verbally shouldered me aside.  "We are prepared to offer you a deal, in return for testimony against Marcus Bakker and Morgen Industries.  I must warn you that audio tapes have been discovered at Stony Plain, recordings of all your management conferences with __and without__ Marcus Bakker in attendance; all of them highly incriminating."

       "Impossible!" Langerhans roared.  "Cecil, don't say anything.  I checked them out myself.  They worked perfectly.  Tape recorders were useless."  He nodded toward Phaethon's desk-top, his eyes fixed toward the left side of it.  And there was only one anomaly there __an alarm clock__ identical to the one that had graced Diana's room in the Fantasyland Hotel.

       I casually rose from my conference chair and walked over to Phaethon's desk.  Brushing past the few indecisive touches of protest from my companions, I made up my mind to take a chance on looking foolish.  Picking up the clock, I yanked the electric cord from the outlet beneath the desk.

       The others, all of them, were shocked at my lack of civility.  Each of them, no doubt, thought me a wild man and each would have stopped me in a moment __if they could have done it by telegram.

       Enjoying every moment of local notoriety, I smashed the clock's casing against the corner of Phaethon's inlaid rosewood desk.  The back came off rather easily after that, to reveal the topside of its printed-circuit board.

       Without a schematic diagram there wasn't a hope of analyzing all its secrets on the spot, but there would still be functional clues betrayed by the major integrated components.  And any patchwork would stick out like a sore hitch-hiker to the educated eye.

       I'd already made my guess, and there it was.  The chips confirmed it.

       "Gentlemen," I gloated, "Far be it from me to bore you with details but there are two extra components here that are patched into the random noise generator: one quartz crystal chip and one high-capacity PROM.  You've been had.  Anyone with an identical set of chips can decipher the resulting noise to extract the original conversations as clean as a whistle."

       Even if I still might be wrong, it sounded good.  The entire board __about one inch by three__ fit easily into my pocket.  There was one micro-tape loaded with noise that was buried in my luggage.

       I thought, if I ever decide to remember her again... and put that apprehension away with the circuit board.  The rest of the clock I tossed into Langerhans' lap, and then sat down again in my chair __pleased if not content.

       After a moment to mourn the passing away of good manners, the Mountie fashion plate jumped in again with both booted feet, but gently.  "You can do soft time for a long time, or you can do hard time for life, no parole.  Take it or leave it."

       Bad guy __  good guy, I figured.  It's a laughable cliche to everybody except the subject __object might be a better way of putting it__ who is getting jerked around.

       Despite the hard-nosed hassling by the visiting team, Faustian politics were obviously going to rule that day, not blind justice.  Her Majesty's Government was obviously looking forward, more or less pleasantly, to the coming Age of the Greenhouse and Canada's eventual ascendance over their southern cousins.  The trained ear had no trouble following the plot-line as they all solicited the Institute's sanitized contributions toward that end.

       Her Majesty still talked tough enough to scare the amateur conspirators out of their wits.

       Cecil Phaethon, in desperation now, played every card he had left.  "You can have no idea of wonders that we've developed.  Our people haven't been allowed to publish anything significant.  There are deep-root plants that dissolve and suck up iron and nickel that would otherwise have to be strip-mined.  They fix nitrogen, convert carbon monoxide to oxygen, yield a cash-crop and leave the land cleansed."  He was still sweating profusely.  "There are anaerobic microbes that clean and thin out shale oil so that it can be pumped.  And not only new agronomic products for the greenhouse environment, but disease fighting agents as well."

       His voiced dropped, reverently.  "There is a promising cancer vaccine.  It doesn't cure cancer, but it destroys the protein associated with metastasis.  And antibody vectors, antisense serums to control bcl-2 and mutant c-myc genes____apoptosis regulation for tumor suppression, lupus, aging____  So many other things_____"

       Pheathon suddenly realized that he might just as well be speaking in tongues to atheists.  Empty lips ran out of words, but not motion.  They still trembled.

        Langerhans took over the defense, trying to staunch the other man's loss of courage.  "Just the agriculture alone, man.  We'll be feeding the world.  And the power, from the rains.  And the water we'll be able to pipe to the draught-stricken Midwest.  We didn't get into this for any other reason but to save lives."  The man from the Hebrides looked around the room defensively.  "We're not criminals, you know.  The good we can do as the world heats up is beyond your wildest dreams.  In twenty years, we'll be the refuge for the world."

       Not beyond my wildest dreams.  It took me now: the dream, the nightmare of the window-mirrors of cold fire, spoke through me.  "No!  Betrayal.  The mirrors.  The cold."

       Even Morty was confused and upset by my outburst.  "What the hell are you talking about?"  He grabbed my left arm to steady me.

       I tried to make sense to somebody __ anybody__ besides myself.  An embarrassing thirty seconds passed while I was untangling my brain.  They all thought I'd had a stroke.

       A lot of schizophrenia is a tragic thing; a little comes in handy, now and then.

       To continue: "Albedo, Morty.  Their summers will get hotter for a while and the winters warmer too.  But the winters will still be well below freezing.  Then the rain will be snow.  All the extra heat in the tropics will generate more clouds, and the clouds will be delivering the precipitation as snow in the winter.  The clouds will be so high with the extra heat energy that they'll easily pass over the mountains and condense in the Northern cold instead, as snow.  The Arctic is technically a desert now.  But when it isn't, do you know what you've got?"

       "An Ice Age?"

        "Right!  An Ice Age," I said, nodding my head.  "Glaciers rolling south.  The ice and snow and the clouds all reflect heat away from the Earth's surface.  Albedo, Morty.  The glaciers will take time, but not the snowfall and the clouds.  That will be on us almost as soon as the time-frame you've been talking about.  Mother Earth won't roll over and play dead.  She'll fight back."

       Phaethon said, "We are using an improved version of Manabe's Global Climate Model.  What are your authorities, Mr. Quirk?"

       "Gypsy dreams, Cecil."  I smiled to show him that I wasn't serious.

       Well, I wasn't going to change any minds there that day, and I didn't manage to change any Canadian minds on any other day.  Nobody wants to be told that they're going to have all rocks and no Scotch one of these days.

       Actually, only one aspect of the meeting was a real shocker to me; that Tedeschi wasn't taking his usual Luddite stance.  That was out of character.  It's one thing to be polite.  It's another to roll over and play dead.

       Morty and I, and even Tedeschi, could agree on one thing though. We saw it in each other's eyes.  The plea-bargaining may have been necessary but it was also disgusting.  Throughout the next several hours, as every detail of the surrender of information, personnel and property was arranged, the two executives sold everybody who had worked for them down the river, in exchange for things like tennis privileges in prison and witness relocation on release.

       Morty whispered a question to me while everyone else argued.  "What did you mean: 'betrayal'?"  I just shrugged, and indicated Tedeschi with my eyes.  On general principles.

       "Could be," he agreed.  "He looks pretty shifty for a priest."

       "Don't be so diplomatic.  He looks pretty shifty for a goddam werewolf."

       "Are you really serious," he asked quietly, "about all that glacier crap?"

       "Did you ever hear of something called the Maunder Minimum?"

       "You've been known to do that, Dick."

       "Too smart, Morty, and not too funny.  The sun may be cooling down a little and reflective dust in the atmosphere is increasing a lot.  That ozone that's disappearing is also a heat-absorbing gas, so when we lose it, we lose heat in the stratosphere.  Could be it helps to drive the Jet Stream, and you can forget about that when it's gone."  The loss of stratospheric heat would also allow ice crystals to form up there __even at temperate latitudes__ with the ozone, accelerating its chemical destruction beyond belief.

       "Seriously, now.  Glaciers?"

       I nodded; having convinced myself, at least.  "They'll start sooner or later, and wind up a mile high."

       "What's the time-frame?"

       "Anybody's guess.  You ever hear of the frozen mammoths that were found in Siberia."

       He thought for a minute.  "Like the one they served for dinner at some explorers' club?"

       "I don't know if that's so, or maybe that was just some old hoax.  Anyway, the bodies were still perfectly preserved.  Must have frozen solid in less than a day or two.  Tons and tons of warm-blooded animal, each.  And for ten thousand years, at least, they stayed frozen."

       "So?"  He wasn't that impressed, not being an engineering type.

       "At least one stomach was still chock-full of fresh sub-tropical vegetation, Morty, the kind that grows at eighty or ninety degrees F ."

       "Frozen faster than kissing a witch's tit?"  The bastard was laughing at me now, while I was pontificating.  The Pope wouldn't put up with that; so why should I have to?

       "No, asshole!" I thought I muttered.  "Faster than hairy elephants shit!"  My attention was given back to the other assholes in the large room, before I got too mad at my chuckling friend.  No sense in giving him more satisfaction.  He loves to get my goat because it's an easy goat.

       As it happened, the other arguments in the room had subsided as well.  All eighteen eyes, besides mine, in the large room were staring at me, wondering __to put it mildly__ if hallucinations of wooly mammoths crapping on the plain were going to run me amuck.  The little that they knew about me did not fill them with confidence in my discretion or stability.

       I wonder why?  I smiled back and crossed my legs to relax them.

       Later there was another sticky moment when the time came to make a deal on the Institute's data banks.

       Phaethon blushed.  He and the Scotsman exchanged bitter glances __like roommates with a clogged toilet.  "There are some difficulties with the mainframe and its communications circuits.  It won't operate at all without those connected and fully functional and we're not quite sure what they're doing.  Some of the files have not been accessible for periods of time and then fine again at other times.  But no data has been lost, we're sure of that."

       Except for Phaethon and Langerhans, every head in the room again turned toward me __this time in accusation.  I tried to look innocent.

       It didn't help.

       Finally we left.  The details of the Devil's trade were all ironed out, and it was time to hop the helicopter back to Edmonton.

       The two latest prisoners of the Crown were left in place for the moment to manage the exodus of their personnel.  Several squads of military and police volunteers formed a Joint Group (Combined Forces) to gather and conserve evidence at the site.  They were moving in smartly through the main gate as we entered the copter.

       Phaethon and Langerhans came to the roof to see us off, along with their ranking uniformed security officer.  No one shook hands.

       The only thunder around was in the beat of the copter blades and it truly didn't sound threatening.  I felt safe; that this day would end peacefully.  One more confrontation, maybe two, and I could get on with my life.

       As if I knew how.

       We were just about to take off when Tedeschi loosened his seat belt and went forward to the pilot's position.  After a minute he returned, but didn't fasten the belt again.  The copter peeled itself off the heliport and grabbed some sky.

       For a few seconds.

       "Look at this, gentlemen.  They have betrayed us."

       We were hovering now over the ventilator, just high enough to be unaffected by the suction.  There was no hood over the intake and any rainfall must have drained out below.  Tedeschi unlocked and slid back the door next to him, looking down.  "Do you see?"

       "What?"  "Who?"

       A premonition gripped me, but I was on the other side of the passenger compartment.  "Stop him!" I shouted.  Too late.  The Monsignor had dropped something into the ventilator shaft.  He slammed the door shut and shouted forward to the pilot, "Quickly, get out of here if you value your life."

       To the rest of his involuntary companions, he said, "We are in God's Hands, gentlemen."  And looking into my eyes alone, he said, "You are also tied to the seat now, Whisper."  Then he smiled at me without rancor.

       We weren't going anywhere though.

       From my seat, I could see the pilot removing his headset with his left hand, turning around to find out what the commotion was all about.  I yelled, "Get moving, there's a bomb down there."  He panicked.  No!  I panicked him.

       Whatever it was that the pilot did tilted us forward, dropping the forward part of the main rotor down toward the ventilator intake.  Then the copter was oscillating back and forth like a pendulum, lower at every sweep of the second hand.

       To my left __out the cabin window__ Langerhans and Phaethon were frozen in place.

       We were being inexorably dragged into a maelstrom of death and destruction, a yard or a meter __who cares__ for each second.  One second, two seconds, three....

       Suddenly, the engine noise was deafening, as the man at the controls unfroze.  It felt like we were ripping the whirling fans below right up out of the roof____as if we weren't being brought down, but instead we were lifting the building up to meet us.

       Then we tilted so far down on my left side, that I thought we'd turn over.  The copter spun around at least twice before we skittered back away from the ventilator.  Tedeschi was thrown toward me and struck the cabin wall, unconscious.  I didn't have time to kill him accidentally before we tilted just as far the other way and he hit the other wall again.  After that centrifugal force kept us apart as we spun around.

        The pilot fought to center his controls, gun the engine and max the main rotor's pitch: all at the same time.  We barely scraped by the satellite dishes at the other end of the roof.

       Our vertical propeller, the tail rotor, had swept the entire clear area of the roof in its swirling escape pattern.  The only indications inside the cabin, of the havoc being inflicted by the gyrating blade outside, were a momentary resistance to the copter's rotation and a chugging sound from the rear of the craft.  Not chopping; chugging: I'm quite sure.

       There was no one left standing below as we spiraled up.  The shredded trunks and various body parts lying around the roof were in no shape to wave goodbye anyway.  Streaky globs of blood ran all across the windows on my side, the left, as our pilot fought his way back into the sky.

       We didn't get far.

       The helicopter managed to fly free for only a short while before the tail rotor shaft started to run hot.  Then we had to set down at a far corner of the Institute's property, awaiting rescue.  All of us stayed where we were in the ten-seater cabin, our nerves stretched to the limit.  

       We could see that our aircraft had been contaminated by the slime mold.  The interaction between the copter's rotor and the intake fan must have caused some kind of blow-back.

       The tires on the retractable wheels were totally gone, crumbled to earth.  But we didn't die, at least not right away.  There was some hope that the seals on the door would protect us somewhat __but not any certain hope, except that of Resurrection in the Life To Come for the Monsignor.

       I woke him __not gently__ so he could fully appreciate the scenario.  It seemed almost a sure thing to me __preordained__ that my destiny was coming to a close, until I thought of Orlando and Dupont.

       No!  There would be no victory that didn't include their deaths.  I was sure of it.  I would not die yet.  I could not; not while they still lived.  Despite the voracious mold spores between me and them.

       A circle of brown death was spreading out along the hay under the near wheel, where its tire had been.  One foot, two feet.  It stopped at three feet, but we still didn't leave the dubious security of the copter's fuselage.  Not even Tedeschi left, and he thought that it would likely be safe once the circles stopped.

       A hatch in the roof of the cabin eventually had to be unscrewed and removed for ventilation.  The pilot, an older black man with tightly curled steel-gray hair, needed some help with that.

       When the hatch was off, he just stared with weary dignity for a while at the lower end of the huge four-bladed rotor drooping over the copter.  After a minute or two, the black man crossed himself and grunted an explanation too low for the others to hear.  "This sucker had a two-blader sticking up there the last time I flew it.  And Allison engines instead of Lycomings.  We just got it back from the refit.  Talk about dead meat.  We'd be nothing but a roof-top barbecue if this was one of the other 230's."

       "Lucky, I guess."

       "Yeah," the pilot agreed, nodding his grizzled head. "It's always lucky when you got a priest or nun on board.  Good thing, too."

       "Whatever you say, pal," I answered.

       He gave me a strange look, the kind reserved for Providence's ingrates.

       Within a few hours a firetruck arrived, driven by men in some sort of radiation suits.  They saw that we were still alive and swung their tripled ladder over to the top of the copter.

       And so, we left our tomb.

       We lived.  Even the despicable Tedeschi lived.  We couldn't prove what he had done, but we all knew.  And even if it could be proven, there would be no trial.  He was protected by diplomatic immunity.

       The Mountie ranted at the Monsignor, about all of the good, God-fearing people that must have died in that building, not just the criminals.  Tedeschi's only answer was the traditional one for indiscriminate religious massacres.  "God will know His own."

       The General and I both knew better than to berate a soldier __however fanatical__ who had done his duty.  The Monsignor had won.  Canada didn't matter.  The people who died didn't matter.  The destruction of our environment didn't matter.  He'd destroyed the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge, and he had avenged the insult to his God.  That was what mattered.  None of my dreams that night could be worse than reality.

       Now we could only wait.  Possibly for some horror to appear at Elphingstoke.  Hell, who knows what experiments were being done when the modified slime-mold hit them?  Or what the final outcome will be.

       And before we even got to where we would be quarantined, more bad news filtered down to us.  The Institute was on fire.  Power had been cut to the entire complex from the main station near Elkprong, but emergency generators from a secure bunker somewhere on the property had come on line automatically.  The low-level fires, probably electrical, were widespread and seemed to be advancing slowly behind the progress of the slime-mold reaction.  Those observations could only be made by binoculars through the outer windows.

       Refugees from the outlying buildings and dorms had been herded onto a safer area of the property, but kept isolated.  No one had escaped from the main building.

       There was nothing for me to do.  I could only regret that we had lost all the knowledge, all of those skilled people who might have made the difference between total ecological death and the survival of Mankind.  Some of us, at least.

       But it was too soon to give up altogether.  Knowledge is always more resilient than bigotry and ignorance.

       CAROUGE, SWITZERLAND

       The sound of arriving and departing jets made the International Airport at Geneva impossible for conversation.  In any event, Diana was not in the mood for conversation that day.  Dressed in mourning black, her lovely features obscured by a veil, she had been met at the arrivals building only by a lawyer.

       There had been an opportunity for dialogue in the limousine trip to Carouge, but the lawyer had explained that Mr. Bakker's wishes were quite explicit concerning her schedule and itinerary, and especially the briefing.

       That had put a bit of a damper on things like chit-chat.

       The interview was definitely one-sided, conducted over time and through space via a television monitor.  Being Swiss, the picture quality was superb.

       Bakker started with a summary of current events in his financial empire.  He covered the recent disclosures of long-standing security breaches in his Canadian organization, the penetration of their organization by the Irishman, Carter, and the resulting computer break-downs, even at the MIS center in Zurich.  The amount of data that had been dumped indiscriminately into public channels would ruin the corporation and Bakker himself, eventually, as it was pieced together by Swiss and other authorities.

       Each stage of Bakker's summary now seemed to be an accusation aimed directly at Diana, although she had previously been sure that her failures were known only to her.  Her heart was filled with rage; at Polewicz, at Carter, mostly at herself for not being cold and cruel enough to carry out her responsibilities adequately, but not at Bakker for blaming her.

       She vowed that she would never fail that way again.

       Bakker closed his presentation with a personal message for her.

       "I know, Diana, that you are blaming yourself for much, if not all of what has occurred.  Be easy on yourself, please.  The corporation has many hidden subsidiaries and much of its wealth and power will be retained, even if a lower profile is required to use it properly."

       She half-rose from her chair to protest her guilt.

       "Diana____I must leave soon," Bakker said.  She sat back down.

       He continued, "There are problems now; problems that I cannot solve.  Pretoria cannot acknowledge or shelter me and I would not compromise my family in any event.  I could not face them anyway, not with three of their sons lost at the Institute, along with Theo_____"  His voice trailed off.  After a few seconds and a sip of something dark from a snifter, Bakker seemed to recover his composure.  "I did not wish to interfere with your lives, but it would have pleased me greatly if you had gotten to know each other well.  Even_____  He_____he was almost like a son, Diana.  I wish_____"  He paused for a moment, giving Diana an opportunity to react to this sudden re-evaluation of their relationship.  Her lips trembled with questions that never would, never could be answered.

       "Holland will not welcome me now," he went on now, calm again, "and Switzerland_____  Well, let's just say that my 'beloved' Switzerland applauds only winners.  The word is out, as they phrase it in your adoptive homeland, and I am finished regardless of what I do.  Therefore, I choose to be the master of my own fate and leave my remains as excrement to be deposited in this alien land of yodeling bankers, as scattered ashes that they cannot avoid __the ultimate insult of air pollution."

       He added one more thing.

       "It is ironic: all of my life's work __and my father's and my brothers'__ has been destroyed, apparently by a religious fanatic and some stranger with a grudge against one of my employees eight thousand miles away.  An employee whom I have never even met, by the way."  Marcus Bakker laughed, a real peal of good-natured laughter.  Perhaps his last.  "It is a very good thing that he was not angry at me as well __is it not?  Just imagine!"

       There was a muted warning from some unseen person in the room with the defeated financier.  Defeated, but not broken.  Diana took her own courage from his to tide her over.

       Bakker left the screen for a moment before returning to look directly into her eyes.  He was a little too close to the camera now to be perfectly in focus but she could see him clearly enough to notice how harried he now appeared now, almost desperate.

       She wanted to turn her eyes away, but couldn't.  This might be the last_____

       "I am sorry, Diana," he said quickly.  "It is past time for me to go.  They have come to arrest me now, much sooner than I had thought possible here."

       Diana started slightly at that, but settled back in resignation.  The denouement of this particular staging was already well known to her.  And her bitter tears were sufficient reaction to vent her overflow of guilt and sorrow at the moment.

       "I must say goodbye now, Diana," Bakker continued.  "You will hear many bad things that are not true about me now, as well as many which are true.  Please remember only that I loved you."

       The despondent young woman welcomed that love and rejected any thought of critical compromise.  Diana also tried to dismiss the belated awareness that Marcus Bakker's love for her had been shared and perhaps exceeded by his love for a man that she hardly knew.  Sons!  Always damned sons!  She sat in the conference chair __tears still streaming down her face, mocked by the tears streaking down and across the vacated monitor__ unable to voice beyond a murmur, a plea phrased by almost silent lips.

       "Father_____"

       The room was otherwise silent.  But it seemed to Diana Stuart Bakker that her last whispered appeal was echoed by the hissing that continued to issue from the video recorder.  "Father" was repeated over and over by the sibilance of the blank video tape.  Moment by moment, it continued to wind up her world.

       EDMONTON, ALBERTA

       I felt unaccountably depressed that morning.  We had been checking out of quarantine so I should have been happy.  Not that I didn't have my sufficient reasons to be depressed, but they were all accounted for.

       My friend Morty had departed Edmonton that morning for home, and my cousins were lying low somewhere waiting for me to get sprung.

       It was a good time for me to go underground too.

       Bracken had been promoted to retiree.  His replacement wasted no time in hinting to the Canadians that they didn't have to rush anybody named Quirk back to the good old U.S.A..

        There must be something to all those old Mountie myths, though.  A couple of the higher-ups let me know how much trouble they were going to have finding me while I was finding Orlando.  For a week, maybe; two, tops!

       It was a good time, in other words, for a to